Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that his country’s forces have engaged in battle with the North Korean troops that were deployed to Russia to assist in its war on Ukraine.
"The first battles with North Korean soldiers open a new page of instability in the world," Zelenskyy said Tuesday in his daily address — his first official acknowledgement of the encounter between the two forces.
Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defense minister, also has confirmed the arrival of the North Korean forces. In an interview with South Korea’s public broadcaster KBS, he said the Ukrainian and North Korean forces has engaged in “small-scale” fighting.
"The first North Korean troops have already been shelled in the Kursk region," Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the counter-disinformation branch of Ukraine’s Security Council said.
According to a U.S. official quoted by The New York Times late Tuesday, a "significant number" of North Korean troops had been killed, though the report said it was not clear when the fighting had occurred.
Earlier Tuesday, Ukraine’s military said it shot down two Russian guided missiles as well as 48 of the 79 drones that Russian forces used in overnight attacks.
The intercepts took place over the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Khmelnytskyi, Kyiv, Odesa, Poltava, Sumy and Zhytomyr regions, the Ukrainian air force said.
Ivan Fedorov, governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, said Tuesday a Russian attack killed at least six people and wounded 16 others. Fedorov said on Telegram that Russia hit an infrastructure facility.
Officials in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region also reported a Russian attack that injured two people and damaged three apartment buildings.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday it destroyed six Ukrainian aerial drones over the Kursk region.
The governor of Bryansk, Alexander Bogomaz, said on Telegram there were no reports of damage or casualties.
A spokesperson for the South Korean Defense Ministry said at a briefing Tuesday that there are more than 10,000 North Korea soldiers currently in Russia, including a portion deployed to front line areas, such as in Kursk.
The statement, which spokesperson Jeon Ha-Gyu said was based on intelligence authorities, came a day after a similar assessment from the U.S. Defense Department.
Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder told reporters that there could be as many as 11,000 to 12,000 North Korean troops in Russia, with most of them in Kursk.
Ryder said the Pentagon could not corroborate reports that the North Koreans were engaged in combat.
Some information for this story came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
